Might As Well
by Fanficworm
Summary: Months after PotW, Rose has had enough with the newest Doctor and asks to go home. The tenth Doctor, though, won't let her go that easily, and gives her a blast from the past. 9Rose, slight 10Rose.


**Author's Note:** Here we go. Probably my first and only _Doctor Who _fanfic. Hope I got the British slang right. It's a bit hard to grasp if you're not a Brit (I'm an Asian living in Papua New Guinea). As always, reviews are encouraged as long as they're not flames. Please be kind; this is a new fandom for me. Thanks.

**Disclaimer:** _Doctor Who_, its characters, plots, situations and all other elements belong to the BBC. The song belongs to Keane.

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Might As Well

By Fanficworm

I don't know your face no more  
Or feel the touch that I adore  
I don't know your face no more  
It's just a place I'm looking for  
We might as well be strangers in another town  
We might as well be living in a different world  
We might as well  
We might as well  
We might as well

I don't know your thoughts these days  
We're strangers in an empty space  
I don't understand your heart  
It's easier to be apart

We might as well be strangers in another town  
We might as well be living in another time  
We might as well  
We might as well  
We might as well be strangers  
Be strangers  
For all I know of you now  
For all I know of you now  
For all I know of you now

_-We Might As Well Be Strangers_ by Keane

* * *

Rose winced at the lasercuffs burning into her skin. "Why does it always have to be like this?"

"Be like what?" The Doctor half grinned at her, half grimaced.

The reptilian creature below them opened up its mouth in anticipation as they were lowered towards it ever so slowly. Rows of razor sharp teeth gleamed at her. Dear God, that gob was big enough to swallow a small car, never mind her and the Doctor! She would have been panicking right then if all the blood in her body weren't rushing to her head. Her face was starting to feel like it was going to explode. The battered leather jacket she wore didn't help matters, either. How the old Doctor could stand wearing that in all climates and situations, she wanted to know.

She shook her head, staving off the nausea for now. "We come to a new place, you do something stupid and then we either get publicly executed or thrown into a dungeon waiting to get publicly executed!" The lasercuffs bit into her wrists again. "Bloody cuffs!" She sucked in a breath. Her glare hardened. "And now here we are, hanging upside down about to be fed to the Asht queen's pet lizard thing, and my head feels like it's about to burst open like something out of a bad sci-fi movie!"

"Usht!" he said.

"What are you on about?"

"The _Usht_, Rose! I swear, you stupid apes." He rolled his eyes. "The Asht are their mortal enemies. And besides, this is isn't exactly a public execution. If we free ourselves, we're spared."

Sodding know-it-all.

He forced a grin. "Just think of it as another day at the office."

"You--! You--!" The blood swirling around in her head brought on a pang of nausea.

He wiggled around a bit. "Look, in my defence, Ushti customs are very hard to learn if you don't have the three hands. There's a fine difference between 'nice to meet you' and 'I know from experience your husband's a wonderful lover' that even _I_ can't remember sometimes."

The Doctor's last comment didn't help Rose's nausea. She felt a gag coming along.

"Rose?"

"Jus' the blood in me head," she said. "Can't think straight."

"Don't worry; I'll get us out of this."

Her vision started growing blurry around the edges. "You will, yeah?" she said. "How?"

He held up--or was that down?--his now-free hands, grinning and brandishing his sonic screwdriver, then he proceeded to free his legs.

She let herself hang loose. "Another day at the office indeed."

A dollop of saliva dripped from the mouth of the lizard creature below them onto the ground, splashing, and leaving behind a very damp area of globular stickiness behind. If Rose didn't know about better, she could've sworn that those globs of spit were burning away at the purple grass they landed on.

Rose felt a tug on the chain they tied her to. She saw the Doctor grinning down at her, fiddling with the lasercuffs binding her hands. The blue glow of the sonic screwdriver fuzzed around the edges, blurring the Doctor's face, and below them the lizard's excitement grew. Growing tired with the painfully slow lowering of his next meal, it began to pace in a circle. The small gathering of high society that made up the audience cheered it on.

"Rose," the Doctor said, "just hang in there and you'll be right." He thought for a second and chuckled to himself. "What am I saying? You can't do much _but_ hang in there."

Rose groaned.

"All right, all right, I'll stop joking." Her hands came free. "There we are. Now we've just got the feet to go."

The audience roared in protest. In response Rose felt her and the Doctor being lowered faster. The lizard creature gave its equivalent of a happy beam. It snapped at them and used its tail to help prop itself higher, and its mouth came closer at a worrying speed.

Rose gulped. "Doctor..."

"Hang on." He stopped again. "Heh." Hang on'."

The creature's grin widened the closer they came. The smell of festering meat and something distinctly acidic drifted into her nostrils.

"_Doctor_..."

"Nearly done, Rose. Just wait a bit, all right?"

The creature's eyes widened and its pupils dilated, and it let fly a glob of spit towards Rose.

"_DOCTOR!_"

The glob landed on an arm of Rose's jacket. She gawped at the wiggling mass of... whatever it was. "Bollocks! I just cleaned this yesterday!"

Doctor investigated the cause of her outburst. His expression turned grave. "Take off the jacket."

"What, and let our little pet here have it as its chew toy?" She clutched at a lapel. "No way."

"Rose_, look_." He motioned for her to see where the glob landed. The saliva burned halfway through the jacket and the smell of alien spit and burning leather heightened her nausea.

"Take it off, Rose."

"No."

"But it's--"

"I told you when you gave it to me, I'm not gonna lose it!"

He rolled up a sleeve. "Sorry, but you'll just have to break that promise."

"Don't you--" Something burned at her arm. She turned and saw the acid starting its work on her shirt, seeping greedily through the cotton mesh onto her skin. She winced, not noticing the Doctor was halfway through taking off her jacket. Only when he tried taking off the other side of the jacket did her attention shift. "Oi!"

Another glob of spit flew onto her jacket. She made the mistake of looking to see where exactly it landed.

"Better this old thing than your life."

And with that the Doctor threw off the burning jacket to the mercy of the lizard creature.

The jacket floated downwards, and despite Rose's cries, disappeared into the creature's cavernous mouth, which happily gulped it down. Her eyes suddenly burned at the edges. She barely noticed the Doctor freeing her legs from their restraints, her falling and him catching her, the roar of the crowd, not even the announcement that they were pardoned for their "crimes". All she could do was stare at the hungry creature that just gobbled up the last tangible reminder of the man she once loved, and fume at the man who let it happen.

The Doctor grinned at her, held her closer. "D'you hear that? We're not just free to go, the queen says none of the shops'll be charging us today!" He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Go on, admit it. I'm amazing."

She glared at him and hit him. Hard. Didn't sodding care if he was the only thing preventing her from falling to her death.

"Steady on!" He flinched, looking not unlike a kicked puppy, and used his free hand to straighten himself. "Not exactly the response I expected. Come on, a free shopping spree, you women love that sort of--" He noted the reddening of her eyes and nose, the hitch in her breath, the empty stare at the creature that just ate her beloved jacket. His features softened. "Rose? You all right?"

"Wanker." She wriggled out of his hold and grabbed on to the other chain. "Useless sod."

"What? What did I do?"

She climbed up the chain without a backward glance.

"Rose?"

* * *

He found her lying on her bed not long afterwards. She'd left her door ajar, but he could tell she wanted to be alone. He peered in. She lay on one side, curled slightly, staring out into nothing, emotionless. Numb. 

The Doctor took in a breath and knocked.

No answer. Of all the times she had to act like a bloody teenager.

He walked in. Still no response. Said her name. Nothing. He sat on the bed next to her. She rolled away a fraction. Well, at least she was still alive.

"This is about the jacket, innit." He injected a smile into his voice. "Come on, you can't be this upset over _clothes_, can you?"

No answer.

"Jesus Christ on a bike. Really?"

She kept staring ahead. "I want to go home."

"You don't mean that." He cranked up the charm. "You're just being all human right now, you are. Either that, or just female. Look, it'll pass soon, you'll go back to normal and then we can have a cuppa and get back to exploring the universe just like we--"

"I want to go _home_."

"What, because of a jacket?"

"Because of _his _jacket!"

"Excuse me, '_his_' jacket? So what am I, chopped liver?"

She rolled onto her side again. "You know what I mean."

"I think I'm starting to," he said. "Listen Rose, I know how much he-I-meant to you, and what you meant to him-me-the previous me. Yeah, that's the one. Though, emm, you mean a lot to me too, but not-at least I don't-" He gave up. "Never mind. You get the point. But you can't really be thinking about going home, trading exploring time and space and the universe for beans on toast and all that shite, all because of a jacket?"

"No, because that would be stupid, wouldn't it? Me wanting to go back to doing 'all that shite' just because I lost a piece of bloody clothing." She curled up slightly. "It didn't fit, anyways."

He frowned. "Then what is it? I might be an alien, but I'm no mind reader."

"Bleedin' obvious, that." She took in a breath, collected herself. "Sorry," she said. "You know, the last Doctor, the 'previous' you, I mean, he's... gone, isn't he? He'd been slowly disappearing, dying off these past months or so, and that jacket was the last thing I had of him," she said. "And now that I managed to lose that, what've I got left that's his?" She looked up at him. "No offence, but it's just not the same with you. Like when we 'old hands or link arms now. It feels wrong. It's not him."

The Doctor plastered on another grin. Best not to let her see how much damage she did to him. "Well, thank you, Rose. I'm now officially jealous of myself."

"Doctor, stop taking the mickey, all right. It's not 'elping me feel any better."

"I swear, I'm serious. But I also think you're being a wee bit melodramatic here." His hand brushed against her hair and landed on a shoulder. She shrugged it off. "My previous self _is_ a tough act to follow, especially where you're concerned," he said. "But, d'you know, he's not really dead. He's safe up here," he tapped his forefinger to his forehead, "in me head. Him and all the others who came before him, they're a part of me. They're _still_ me. None of them ever actually died, they're--" He would've gone on if he thought Rose listened to him and didn't just hear what he said.

On second thought, he wasn't sure that she heard him at all. She just kept staring into space as though he'd never breathed a word.

"You're grieving now, aren't you," he said. "After all this time."

"No," she said. "I should feel bad, finally getting he's gone, that he won't come back." She corrected herself. "I should feel devastated. I mean, I can't _feel_ anything and that's stupid because I lov--" She stopped, shook her head, continued staring ahead. "Forget what I said." She turned her head to face him. Her face stayed unsullied from trails of mascara he'd half-expected to run down her face. She smiled something that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'll be okay, Doctor. I'll meet you at the console room and then we can go out and splurge on that shopping spree, yeah? Just give me a few minutes."

He nodded and left her to her own devices, heading towards the console room. Something told him that she was going to need more than a few minutes.

The new and improved room greeted him with its swirling colours and abstract sculptures. He'd never liked the sterile look of sci-fi, the dark, foreboding presence of the gothic look, or his last incarnation's fondness of using junk as makeshift controls. After his regeneration and the ill-fated trip to Barcelona (if memory served, they spent less time looking at the noseless dogs and more time running for their lives) he'd decided to see if there was something he could do about his beloved "old girl", and a once-over of the console room answered that question straight away. So, a few shopping trips to Earth and some nebulas with incomprehensible names later, he started work on turning that gloomy console room to something a little more bright. Rose teased him mercilessly all throughout, arseing about and asking if he'd regenerated gay as well as Scottish before bursting into bright peals of laughter.

A wistful smile graced his lips. If there was one thing that didn't change about him, it was his love of that smile and that laugh, and how on some occasions she would afterwards stick her tongue in between her teeth and he could remember what he was missing during his travels alone. He still loved her, he knew, but something told him she wouldn't be too receptive towards any sort of advance he'd make towards her.

Now that he thought about it, she smiled a lot less often after he changed. Sure, she practically started throwing herself into the adventures with unprecedented gusto and overenthusiastic grins, but the first time she glowed, started _living_ again... That was when he gave her that battered old jacket because the TARDIS found him a nice new outfit. And now that he thought about it more, he realised that she never actually _did_ mourn his previous self's passing. She was always busy with something, or distracted, or running for her life, and that was taking its toll on her. Instead of letting out her grief and moving on, she'd chosen to hold it close and let it fester, and over time she turned from his sweet little shop girl to someone... different. She'd started snapping at his stupid jokes, waiting just a few seconds more to help him out of a difficult situation, hesitating to take his hand. He may not have been "her" Doctor anymore, but she sure as hell wasn't his Rose, either.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back on his heels, thinking. There must've been some way to help her. At least give her a way to say goodbye to the old him and let her move on with her life. After all, he'd spent over nine hundred years solving everyone else's problems; the least he could do was try to help Rose deal with hers. His eyes wandered up to the console, and a gleam caught his attention. On a whim he decided to walk over and see what the shiny thing was, and upon further inspection it turned out to be the holo-recorder. On an ordinary day he wouldn't have given it a second thought, but something about this holo-recorder on this particular occasion...

(_"This is Emergency Programme One. Rose, now listen, this is important."_)

He frowned. Something... Something--some_one_-- told him make that programme, but he couldn't remember what--_who_, he corrected himself. It was... It was a cold day. Something about pizza and Kleenex.

("_Right, nice to meet you. Funny that, really, since it's pretty much impossible for us to actually ever meet."_)

Who said that to him, again? This... This lanky bloke. Brown hair and white sneakers and...

("_Handsome, aren't I? Personally, I'd say it's an improvement."_)

And new teeth.

His hand hovered over the controls a second, and changed the co-ordinates and the date they would arrive in. He grinned. "Sorry, Old Girl. Change of plans."

The TARDIS shuddered as she dematerialised, and a sound not unlike keys being scraped across piano strings reverberated across her entire body. The Doctor held on tight to the junk-free controls.

"Rose'll have to wait another day to go on that shopping spree."

* * *

Rose sat bolt upright upon hearing the engines wheeze to life. "Where does he think he--?" 

Home? Was he really bringing her back to 2006 London? She stumbled out of her room into the corridors. "Doctor?" she said. "What's going on?"

The engines stopped.

Rose dashed into the console room. "Doctor?"

He stood by the door leaning back onto his heels, hands shoved into his pockets. He perked up when he saw her enter. "About time. I was about to call you when I heard you bumbling around in there." His feet landed onto the floor with a dull click. "Shall we?"

"You're really doing it," she said. "You're really taking me back."

"Well," he said, "yes and no. I mean, this _is_ London in 2006, but think of this trip as more of a... confirming trip."

"A what?"

"A confirming trip," he said. "For you to find out if you're dead sure you want to go back home, leave me behind a broken shell of the Time Lord I once was." His features softened. "We might as well. I mean, it's a big decision."

He opened the doors and then gestured to the bustling metropolis that lay ahead. _Funny. Usually he'd want to hold hands or link arms._ She walked up to join him, and noticed his smiling façade waver for just a second.

"After you," he said.

"All right." She took a step forward. Halfway out the door she stopped, fumbled around in her pockets. "Wait." She pressed her mobile and her TARDIS key into one of his palms. "Here." She looked him square in those big brown eyes. "Just in case I run off on you."

He smiled humourlessly. "I understand." His fingers curled around them and placed them into his coat pocket.

She walked out, and he followed.

* * *

_Ninth Doctor's timeline, a week or so before meeting Adam_

The Doctor made sure his hands were perfectly still, steady. Calm. His left hand held down-with the gentlest of touches-the component, while his right hand, gripping the sonic screwdriver, edged closer towards it. Droplets of sweat gathered on his brow. He frowned. It must've been the human side of him doing that again. Really, he loved his mother dearly, but not the human genes she passed on to him. Those fuzzy little apes were so subject to flights of emotion sometimes. Little wonder a routine (all right, once a decade) activity was making his knuckles turn white where the other Time Lords would've finished by now without so much as raising their hearts-rate. He just had to make sure he focussed the beam on the right spot and--

A sneeze exploded down the hall, courtesy of Rose.

He started, his hands slipped and the sonic screwdriver visited its glowing blue wrath on the exact spot he didn't want to hit. The TARDIS wheezed in protest and threw a few sparks the Doctor's way for being so careless. He sputtered them out of his face.

"All right, all right! I'm sorry!"

Groan.

"Don't you groan at me like that. You know full well Time Lords aren't completely immune to shocks."

Moan.

"Okay, _half_ Time Lords. You happy?"

Wheeze.

"Good." He shook his head and repositioned his hands. His thumb slid over the button. "Right," he said. "No interruptions this time and I might just--"

"A-**CHOO**!"

History repeated itself, from the slipping of the hands to the hitting of the wrong spot and right down to the shower of angry sparks. And this time he also managed to knock over another component (_what_ it was didn't really matter to him as much as the extraordinary crushing power it had over his big toe). He dropped the screwdriver in favour of comforting himself. It took him the utmost effort to keep himself from kissing the toe better. Dear Rassilon. He really _was_ half stupid ape.

The TARDIS creaked happily.

"Oh, shut up."

Creak.

From down the hall: "A-**CHOO**!"

The Doctor sighed.

"Doctor…" Rose seemed uncannily like a whining cat at this moment. "I thig I'b gonna die."

He repositioned his hands_ again_. "Rose, you'll be fine."

"No, I wo'd," she said. She coughed theatrically. "A few days frob now, you'll have to tell be mum you god be killed. I biss my mum."

"You can call her with your mobile; you've not lost motor ability in your hands or your mouth, 'ave you?"

"No."

"Unfortunately," he said. Right, left hand holding down component, right hand holding sonic screwdriver...

"Doctor..."

"Not now, Rose."

"But be 'ead hurts."

Right hand holding sonic _screwdriver_... "Not _now_."

"Call yourself a doctor," she said. "Can't eved handle a persod sick in bed." She sneezed again and groaned.

He let the screwdriver drop to the ground. Never mind about the vents in the third floor of the eighth south-west wing, then. Never mind if one of these days they might suddenly burst into flames and kill everything in their vicinity, including his collection of vintage comic books that he planned to sell someday. No, it was _nothing_ to worry about. Nothing at all.

"Look Rose, I know your sickness is deadly for some people but it's little more than a cold for you humans," he said, rubbing his temples. He really should've known better than to try to cure the etiarellaromir epidemic in Qatorzaa 5 with her tagging along. "Trust me, you've got nothing to worry about. It'll clear up in a few days." He accidentally on purpose neglected to mention that it also caused a few temporary chemical imbalances in the brain, but he had half a mind to just "blurt" it out and watch the mayhem.

"Nothig to worry about? I've turned _green_!"

"It's an improvement," he muttered. "Fine, if it'll make you happy, we'll pop down to London for a bit. We won't visit your mum, but I'll get you something nice, all right? What d'you want?"

"Anything but chips. We've been livig on that for a week now."

"All right, then what?"

Silence.

Rose piped up. "Pizza? Pepperoni, with lots of cheese?"

"Not the best thing for someone with etiarellaromir to have, pizza. How about something lighter, like chicken soup-flavoured wafer? You humans like having that sort of thing when you're ill. I just refilled the food machine yesterday so it can make anything you like."

"But Doctor..."

"What?"

"I want some real food, not chips or wafers."

"I'll have you know that the TARDIS wafers _are_ real food," he said. "They provide all of the necessary proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals--"

"--Ad vitamids one would expect to have during a traditional beal," she finished. "Come on, Doctor. A liddle bit of home never hurd adybody." She sniffled. "A-**CHOO**!"

"Fine." The Doctor readied his slightly psychic paper. "Pizza it is, then. But if you think I'm gonna turn all domestic on you and spend half the evening moppin' your mess off the floor, you'd better think again."

"And... and some soft Kleenex?"

"Sure."

He heaved himself out of his little niche and absently wiped his nose. "Right. London 2006," he said. He thought for a moment. Right. He rolled the paperweight a few times, rung the bell and pumped the bicycle pump once, twice, and held on to the console. The TARDIS's engines groaned to life and they began their flight. 14 June 2006, the reading on the monitor said. The TARDIS seemed to be having fun rocking her internal dimensions around more energetically than necessary.

A thump came from a room down the hall. "Oi! Dot so rough! I'm _ill_!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. First the TARDIS, then Susan and all the others, and now Rose. "Women," he said. "Why do I always have to travel with _women_?"

The TARDIS wheezed in such a way he was sure she was laughing at him.

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

Tenth Doctor's timeline, 14 June 2006

"So this is a test?"

"Sort of, yeah." The Doctor continued his walk down the pavement, his eyes constantly scanning the shops and the people around him.

She trotted up beside him. "And what are we gonna do, blow something up or just walk the streets the whole time?"

He chuckled. "Blow something up, Rose?"

"Why not? You like that sort of thing."

He turned a street corner and continued his scanning. "Yeah well," he said, "Don't worry. We're not here to blow anything up, but I promise some explosive chemistry today." His face lit up once he spotted the shop sign he seemed to be looking for. "And if I remember correctly, here we are."

"Wait, what d'you mean, 'if I remember corre--'" She followed his gaze and read the sign."Pizza Hut. You brought me here to eat?"

"No." He flashed a grin. "Wait for it."

That's it. After all this time he finally cracked. Or maybe he'd cracked already and was just cracking some more.

She signed and peered inside, waiting for whatever it was that was going to happen. "What? What is it?"

"You'll see."

"But I don't--"

"I told you, Rose." He beamed. "Wait for it."

She looked inside again. Maybe the people in there could have something to do with all this he was--"Hang--Hang on, that's you!"

"Yep."

"The other you."

"Yep."

"But you're not allowed to do this," she said. "Meet yourself. It's against the laws of time, it causes a... a wossname and the Reapers take over the universe."

"Paradox, Rose. And that's never stopped me," he said. "Never stopped you, either. And it won't stop us now."

"So what," she said. "Is this what this test is, then? Some quick fix to get me flying back into your arms? What're you trying to--?"

He held up a hand and looked down at his watch. She stopped, her anger quelled for now. "I'm just trying to help, Rose. Both myself and you."

"What're you on about?"

"This is a memory for me," he said. "I'm not changing the timeline, I'm preserving it. I remember this, seeing you and this me outside this pizza place. And now it's his turn to remember. Well, it will be in about..." He looked down at his watch again. "Ten seconds."

Rose looked at the glass doors, out of which the ninth Doctor strode out as though on cue, balancing a pizza box in one hand and tucking a Kleenex box under the other arm. All the while he muttered something about green humans and how grumpy women got when they were sick. A memory stirred. This was the time when she caught that alien disease that gave her a massive cold and turned her green, she remembered. So _that _was why he acted so domestic when he came back.

"Go on," the tenth Doctor said, giving her a light push his previous self's direction. "Do your job."

"But you haven't told me what it is, yet."

He shrugged. "Act natural, give him a proper goodbye, and don't give away anything except maybe his name." He stopped. "Or is that my--never mind."

"But Doctor--"

"Yeah?" The ninth Doctor had turned around, answering her call. She didn't expect herself to be anywhere near ready for this. Even the sight of him was threatening to overwhelm her. Those icy blue eyes, Prince Charles ears, nose you could see from outer space weather permitting... She stood before him then, feeling like a right idiot, which his apparent confusion at her arrival upon seeing her grew. "Rose, what're you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be sick?"

"Actually," she said, "I'm not so sure anymore."

His eyebrows furrowed at her, the crease lines on his forehead following suit. The tenth Doctor didn't have those wrinkles. Not anymore. After a few seconds the ninth Doctor sighed. "Oh, fan_tas_tic. I should've known."

He finally figured it out.

"You weren't sick at all, were you? This was just so you could come to London to shop."

Okay, maybe he was a bit off.

"Well, congratulations. I don't have the Academy Award to hand you, but I do have these." He handed the pizza and Kleenex boxes to her. "If you need me, I'll be back in the TARDIS fixing the one of the vents circuits."

She laid a hand on his shoulder. "No, wait, you don't--"

"You're right." He snatched the pizza box back. "I'd better keep this. Time Lords get hungry, too." He waved goodbye. "Cheers, then. I want you back by dark, young lady."

"_Doctor_." She grabbed onto his arm this time, and squared him off on the eye. "Look at me. Look hard. And be honest. Do I look like the Rose Tyler who ran off with you in the TARDIS that night, whose mobile you'd juiced up and whose boyfriend you'd had become a murder suspect? Think carefully before you answer."

He cocked his head, perfectly serious, and looked her over. "Rose, is this some twisted version of 'Do I Look Fat in This'?"

"No." She laughed despite herself, not a full-on bellylaugh but the softer kind she used to have during their banter. "You know, for someone with eight lives other lives of travelling with women, you never could understand them," she said, and bit on her lip a second. "I miss that about you. You've no idea."

Some of the light drained from his smile. "How'd you know about my other lives?"

"Because you told me, before you burst into flames and regenerated in front of me." Her voice began to quiver. "Because for me you've been gone for three months and left me with a Scottish stranger with bad hair."

"I resent that remark," the tenth Doctor said, advancing towards them. "At least I _have_ hair." He ran a hand through his brown locks and leaned back on his heels. He grinned at the ninth Doctor. "Right, nice to meet you. Funny that, really, since it's pretty much impossible for us to actually ever meet."

The ninth Doctor frowned at him. "You're Number Ten?"

"Handsome, aren't I? Personally, I'd say it's an improvement. I mean, _look_ at those ears." He continued talking before his previous incarnation could open his mouth. "Yes, I know this is against the rules. But that didn't stop you seeing Number Seven, though, did it?" he said. "Anyway, don't get your knickers in a knot. This is a memory; I'm just preserving the timeline. Now." He jerked his head towards the alley nearby. "You two go in there. Talk your hearts out. If memory serves, I'll be out here, doing nothing in particular."

They stared at him.

"Go on, then."

They stared at each other.

"Oh come on, Rose, this isn't--"

Rose snatched the boxes from him and gave them to the tenth Doctor, then grabbed onto his hand and led him towards the alley. "Let's go," she said. "Much as I hate to admit it, he's usually right when it comes to serious stuff like this, the sodding know-it-all."

"I heard that!" Number Ten called from the street, earning him a few odd looks.

She shook her head and continued down the alley. "Maybe we should go where he can't butt in."

The Doctor--Number Nine--laughed at her. She stopped.

"What?" she said. "What's so funny about this?"

"Okay, Rose," he said, stopping. "I get it. You read my time logs and somehow got the TARDIS to tell you about my other selves."

"But--"

"That actor, though, that friend you got to play Number Ten. I mean, what was his--"

"_Doctor_."

He stopped and looked at her, the creases on his forehead crinkling as his eyebrows shot up. She missed those creases.

She drew her focus back to the present. "Your real name," she said. "It's Greek, innit?" She hesitated a moment. "Theta Sigma, yeah? That wasn't in your time logs."

"You know my university nickname."

"The other you told me," she said. "D'you believe me now?"

"I--" He looked at her, stared at her hard, much like she wanted him to do just a few moments before. "But look at you," he said. "You don't look a day older than when I first met you."

She smiled despite herself. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"No, you don't understand me," he said. "Rose, do I really regenerate that early?"

Again she hesitated.

"Yeah, probably best you don't say anything. Don't wanna mess up the timeline or anything like that." He sighed. "That isn't what you came here for, though, was it?"

She tugged at her jeans pocket, bit her lip, released it. "You know, I wish you were right. I wish I came here to warn you about what happens, and maybe stop this whole regeneration nonsense. Fact is, though, I didn't, and I'm not about to, either."

"Then what's this all about?

"I don't..." She stopped. "I'm not..." Again. "Nothing really," she said at last. "I just came here to let you go."

He nodded, understanding radiating from him, and pulled her into a hug. She breathed in the scent of him, the one he used to have, and hugged him back. Suddenly the barriers of wit and anger she had erected since the Bad Wolf incident wavered, and her facade of numbness began to break down. She shivered, and suddenly her throat seemed clogged up with hankies. He seemed to sense this, and pulled her closer, just a bit. Through that battered leather jacket and navvy-style jumper, she felt his two hearts beating against her own.

"It was that hard on you," he said, after a while.

She nodded.

"Rose, I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

Silence. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

"I love you, you know," he said.

"Yeah, I do."

More silence. Something in that made her realise that maybe there was more to the Doctor--any of the Doctors--than just a leather jacket or a pinstripe suit, something fundemental and common to all of them that made them the Doctor. In their own way.

He leaned in, and kissed her brow. She let her head rest against his a moment, and then when she kissed his lips, it suddenly occurred to her that this was both their first and second kiss together. Ah, the magic of time travel. She let herself smile, her lips curving against his, and broke away.

"Thanks," she said. "For everything."

"You're welcome," he grinned, "in advance."

She gave him one last peck on the cheek, and headed out.

"Rose," he called after her.

"Yeah?"

"Go easy on Number Ten, all right?" he said. "Sometimes, regeneration's harder on me than it is on my companions, 'specially when they don't adjust to the new me."

It triggered something like a montage in her head. Little incidents of her travels with the new Doctor popped into mind, all of times when she wasn't exactly Companion of the Month material.

(_"Wanker."_)

Times when she insulted his wardrobe choice, when she batted his proffered hand or arm away, or when she at times took a hidden satisfaction in the hurt in his eyes, the eyes of the stranger who dared to replace the man-Time Lord-she fell in love with.

(_"Useless sod."_)

No, she corrected herself again, the Time Lord who had no choice but to replace the one she fell in love with. The Time Lord who had no choice in his accent, or the size of his nose, or the length of his stride, but who did have a choice on whether or not to keep her on or not.

(_"Is this what this test is, then? Some quick fix to get me flying back into your arms? What're you-"_)

She was so horrible to him, and yet he tried everything possible to keep her interest, show her the universe, make her life something that surpassed extraordinary. He went through all that when he could've just as easily tossed her aside or brought her home.

(_"I'm just trying to help, Rose."_)

...He must've still loved her, then.

(_"Both myself and you."_)

Even after regeneration.

Oh God, she thought. _I've been such an **arse**_.

She willed her face to pull up her lips into a smiling position. "I'll keep that in mind."

They smiled at each other one last time, and she let him go.

* * *

The tenth Doctor met her and his previous self outside the alley, his self-confidence deflated for the moment and reduced to slight anxiety and shyness. He puffed up his unimpressive chest at an awkward position, and his eyes didn't quite crinkle when he strode over to them, smiling. "So, how'd you two lovebirds get along?" Number Nine looked at him. "You should remember." 

The tenth Doctor tapped at his forehead. "Post-regeneration memory loss."

"Probably for the best, then."

The two sized each other up and grinned, each obviously regarding himself as the better incarnation.

"Nine," the tenth Doctor said, giving him back his boxes of peace offering for Rose.

"Yeah?"

"Take care of Rose, all right? Make sure you prepare the TARDIS for whatever happens."

"Sure you won't give me any hints?"

"What," the tenth Doctor said, "d'you think I'm stupid?" Upon seeing his ninth self's manic grin he decided to provide an answer for him. "Wait no, don't answer that."

Rose laughed.

The tenth Doctor's gaze darted towards her. "A laugh from Rose Tyler? At one of _my_ jokes?"

"Oi," she said. "Don't push it."

He put on a face of mock hurt, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Come on," he said. "We'd better leave our friend alone. The younger you must've been starving for quite a while now."

The ninth Doctor's eyebrow creased at the pizza box. "It feels... light."

The tenth Doctor cringed. "Yeah, about that..."

Number Nine looked into the box, and Number Ten quickly grabbed onto Rose's hand. Their hands knit together, not the way they did with his previous incarnation, but in a way that felt right all the same. "Get ready to run," he whispered into her ear.

"You ate the pizza!" the ninth Doctor said.

"Run!"

They ran.

The tenth Doctor grinned and called back. "There's always chicken soup!"

Her fingers tightened around his.

* * *

_Later, ninth Doctor's timeline_

The dinner went better than he initially expected. After the loss of the pizza, the Doctor thought there might've been something in what his future self said. He arrived back at his TARDIS bearing the ingredients needed for a proper chicken soup, much to Rose's initial ire. After presenting her with the adequate medication needed to give her a good, long sleep to forget her illness, though, did he find that she no longer wished a horrible death on him.

As soon as he saw her bend down to cook the soup, he forced her back into bed. He would take care of her now; he promised her mother after all. Despite her protestations, he plopped her onto bed and insisted he'd do the cooking. She asked what was going on, and he just said something had reminded him of his duty to take care of her, that's all. She then took two large sleeping pills, mumbled "thank goodness for that, then", and promptly dozed off in a phlegmy snoring fit. He laughed softly and kissed her on the forehead, then set off to work. Those experiences with watching his companions cook when they got tired of the food machine's wafers wasn't a complete waste of time, after all.

Only halfway through making her chicken soup did he realise he was doing domestic.

He frowned.

"Bollocks."

* * *

_About the same time, tenth Doctor's timeline_

Rose slumped down the bench. Overhead, the sky let a few beams of light stream through its blanket of clouds. Underfoot, a ladybird scuttled onto her sneaker. And on the bench, her hand crept towards the Doctor's. She liked this feeling, feeling new and free of her burdens, and that for once, all was right with the world and the rest of the universe. After all this time, the cancerous pain that had been spreading inside her since the regeneration seemed to have been sated and in recession for now, if not gone altogether. And to be totally honest, she didn't think she wanted it back anymore. This was nice, this feeling.

"So, you made your decision yet?" the Doctor said.

She looked up from her hand. "What?"

"Your decision. On the confirming trip."

"Oh yeah. That."

He removed from the coat pocket the TARDIS key and mobile she pressed into his hand only an hour or so earlier. He looked at them. She looked at them. Dull sunlight glinted off both the items.

"What'll it be, then, d'you think?" he said. "D'you wanna come with me to the TARDIS or stay here, with Ricky and your mum?"

"It's Mickey, Doctor."

He shrugged. "In the grand scheme of things, his name will never glean any kind of relevance, least of all to me."

"You sure about that?" she said. "Maybe someday he'll turn out to be the inventor of something that'll change the world forever, and you just don't wanna tell me 'cause you're jealous of him."

"Well," he said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. Fact is, you'll have to find out for yourself." He gave her a look, confident and cocky on the superficial level but with a tinge of hope and uncertainty underneath. "That is," he said, "if you want to."

"You still want to keep me on? After the way I'd been acting all this time?"

"Course I do," he said. "Gets lonely out there, in the infinite reaches of outer space. And the TARDIS isn't exactly the most articulate sentient being in the universe, let me tell you."

"But you could always replace me, though," she said. "You've had other companions."

"Am I to understand, then," he said, "that you want to go back home?"

Her eyes focussed on the phone and the key. They bored into the Doctor's eyes, the hope in them close to being extinguished. And then they looked at the burns on her arms she received earlier that day from the Usht queen's pet lizard. "It'd be so easy," she said, "just to give it all up. Just to forget all about you and spend the rest of me life here, safe, where the only aliens I'd ever see would be in the movies." She looked at him. "But I know I can't live like that. I know I can't function normally, staying put here. And it's damned impossible to forget you, no matter which you you are. Besides, who's gonna look after you if I'm not around, hey? Face it, Doctor," she said, and picked up the mobile and key, "You're stuck with me."

"Really?" he said. "You sure you're fine exploring with this new me, then?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, let's call this a fresh start."

He grinned, not his old grin, but something that suited him, the new him. "Great," he said.

She grinned back. "Fan_tas_tic."

* * *

Ninth Doctor's timeline, an hour or so later

"You should cook bore often," Rose said, handing him the empty bowl of chicken soup. She snuggled under the covers, content.

The Doctor licked up the remains of his wafer from his fingertips. "Don't get used to it, Rose." He continued licking the crumbs off his fingers. Beef wellington today, one of the better Earth recipes out there. "You'll be back to the food machine's wafers until the next time you come down with something that leaves you sick in bed."

"Maybe we should go visid a disease planet or somethig then," she said. "Then you'd have to cook for us all the time." Her face contorted into a salad green grimace. "After this, I'b nod sure I can go back to TARDIS wafers." She wiped at her nose. "Where'd you leard how to cook like this?"

He leaned back in his chair. "When you reach my age, you know how to do pretty much anything."

"'Xcept baybe cob back with a pizza," she said. "D'you think maybe you could--"

"Oi," he said. "Down girl." He made sure she was tucked in nice and comfortably. "I'll cook again tomorrow. How's that?"

"Pizza?"

"Maybe something lighter."

She snuggled further into the sheets, mumbling something incomprehensible before again falling into a deep slumber. Despite her all-too-human snores and illnesses, she still seemed to him the most beautiful thing in existence, something to be treasured forever. And protected. Judging by how old the future Rose looked, it didn't seem he'd have much more time to protect her in his current form. There was no telling how much longer he could have some time with her. He looked at her once more, to make sure she was really asleep, and headed towards the console room, more specifically the holo-recorder.

Upon reaching it he switched it on, and looked into it with the utmost gravity. His next self had a point. Rose was his charge, and being his companion he had an obligation to make sure she would be safe no matter what happened to him.

"This is Emergency Program One," he said. "Rose, now listen, this is important..."


End file.
